y
to and fro before the Mint. He envied them their places in the scheme
of world's labour. And he envied also the miserable sallow, thin-faced
loafers blinking their obscene eyes and rubbing their greasy shoulders
against the doorjambs of the Black Horse pub, because they were too far
gone to feel their degradation.

I must render the man the justice that he conveyed very well to us the
sense of his youthful hopelessness surprised at not finding its place in
the sun and no recognition of its right to live.

He went up the outer steps of Saint Katherine's Dock House, the very
steps from which he had some six weeks before surveyed the cabstand, the
buildings, the policemen, the boot-blacks, the paint, gilt, and
plate-glass of the Black Horse, with the eye of a Conqueror. At the
time he had been at the bottom of his heart surprised that all this had
not greeted him with songs and incense, but now (he made no secret of
it) he made his entry in a slinking fashion past the doorkeeper's glass
box. "I hadn't any half-crowns to spare for tips," he remarked grimly.
The man, however, ran out after him asking: "What do you require?" but
with a grateful glance up at the first floor in remembrance of Captain
R--'s examination room (how easy and delightful all that had been) he
bolted down a flight leading to the basement and found himself in a
place of dusk and mystery and many doors. He had been afraid of being
stopped by some rule of no-admittance. However he was not pursued.

The basement of Saint Katherine's Dock House is vast in extent and
confusing in its plan. Pale shafts of light slant from above into the
gloom of its chilly passages. Powell wandered up and down there like an
early Christian refugee in the catacombs; but what little faith he had
in the success of his enterprise was oozing out at his finger-tips. At
a dark turn under a gas bracket whose flame was half turned down his
self-confidence abandoned him altogether.

"I stood there to think a little," he said. "A foolish thing to do
because of course I got scared. What could you expect? It takes some
nerve to tackle a stranger with a request for a favour. I wished my
namesake Powell had been the devil himself. I felt somehow it would
have been an easier job. You see, I never believed in the devil enough
to be scared of him; but a man can make himself very unpleasant. I
looked at a lot of doors, all shut tight, with a growing conviction that
I would